“Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.” – William Wordsworth

Monday, November 2, 2009

"I was just imagining that I was the abominable snowman.."

So, after I taught my lesson on "realistic fiction" --I think I failed to communicate the "realistic" part well-- one of my students had a little incident where he got caught trying to bite another student's arm. (That sounds worse than it was.) The moment he got caught and was sent to the teacher's table to do his work he burst into tears. He was quite upset that he had gotten in trouble.

I had to walk him downstairs to dismissal and asked him what had happened. In his raspy little boy voice he said, "I-I-I didn't mean to bite her. I-I was just, I was... I was just imagining... I was just imagining that I was the abominable snowman." I looked at him trying to remain serious without busting out in laughter, "So, that was why you were going to bite her arm?" "I was just imagining I was the abominable snowman!!" he continued to tell me as if that made all the best sense in the world. I had to tell him very seriously how we are not allowed to bite people, even if we're imagining that we are the abominable snowman.

Oh my, it was funny. His "realistic" fiction story is going to be fantastic (literally).